Thursday, 27 August 2015

Usually on this part of the trip on the Coventry Canal the most noticeable bit of the day are the 11 locks at Atherstone, and that was the case on this day. We stopped mid flight to replenish the water tank on "Flamingo", as we have yet to get the measure of how fast the ridiculously large bath is emptying it! (The bath will go eventually, to be replaced by something more practical, once we have time to fully refit the bathroom which we have already decreased in size very significantly).

Most of the Atherstone flight is rural and picturesque.

At the moment I still seem to be the one at the tiller in Lock flights.

Wednesday, 26 August 2015

A fairly leisurely trip up to Alvecote continued, and gave me my first attempt on a full length working boat at the well known 180 degree turn at "Sutton Stop" or Hawkesbury Junction. (It is easy enough on shorter boats, but with full length ones it gets a bit harder).

My excuse was that my approach to the turn was hampered by a boat coming the other way, so I never started from an ideal position, (well I would say that wouldn't I!).

I didn't get around in one on my first attempt, but it wasn't a bad first try.

Trying to position for the "180" at Hawkesbury, not helped by other boats!

Tuesday, 25 August 2015

Well the blog managed to founder far more spectacularly than we have ever achieved before! Nothing posted afer just the first day of quite a major trip, and indeed there have been further trips since.

Rather than leave a complete void, we will attempt to retrospectively add a few pictures, even if it is now, in general, a bit too late for many words!

Here, only about a month and a half after it happened, is a flavour of our trip to take Flamingo to Alvecote for the first time

EDIT: Second attempt at this day, after Adam correctly pointed out that my days didn't match my photos!

This was actually a short day due, in part, to a very scary incident we were involved in at Hillmorton Bottom Locks, and about which I am still awaiting a response from CRT. I have decided not to further discuss details until CRT have finally made their response.

Monday, 24 August 2015

We've
been working around the clock to finish the bulkhead move, install the
Morco water heater, and to reinstate the bath and the Thetford Cassette
toilet. We will attempt to add some posts later about all the work we have completed, once we are organised with some photos and more time.

Buckby flight

Because we had so much to do we decided that we really wouldn't
have time to take Sickle along to Alvecote this year - it moors two days
further south than Flamingo, and we didn't have two days, as it was we
got home at 11 pm on the day we returned home for essential washing of
clothes, shopping, picking our son, David up, etc. before leaving again.

Buckby flight again.

We
arrived back at the boat on Sunday evening, and loaded on board. There
seemed to be an awful lot of stuff, given that we still have a lot of
material for the refit on board. Obvious stuff that could be left in the
car was moved, but otherwise we just moved skips around.

Buckby top lock

We
set off at about 10:30 on Monday morning, made a brief stop in Weedon
for milk and bread, and set off again towards Whilton Locks, which passed
without incident, (although subsequently there has been a major gate failure, initially closing the navigation, but currently with CRT allowing limited supervised passage - we wonder what will be the situation when we need to return!).

Posed picture? Surely not!

At the top Cath quickly prepared a meal which we ate
hurriedly before arriving at Braunston tunnel. As Odin has started to
get stressed in tunnels Cath walked him over the top, and then we worked
down the locks with another boat. We got to the bottom at about 5:30,
and had originally intended to moor up soon, but realised that if we
kept going for a while we could meet up with a friend for the evening.
We stopped just south of Hillmorton locks, and had a meal and pleasant
company in the Old Royal Oak.